Travel

Sean and I went down to Palm Springs last weekend for a little last-minute R&R before the baby is scheduled to arrive in six weeks time. We wanted to get away, just the two of us, for a few days of not talking about the nursery or labor breathing or paternity leave, and to just enjoy hanging out with each other as a couple before we begin the rest of our lives together as a family. Yeah, I could call it a "babymoon," I guess, but then how could you ever take me seriously again?

I must say one thing about Germany before I say anything else: they have got this whole sleeping thing figured out. They have a great many other things figured out better than the rest of us, of course—beer; knives; punctual public transit; gummybears—but it is in the area of beds that they really excel. To wit: did you know that when you stay in a German hotel with a double bed that it's not actually a double bed but two single beds pushed together? And that instead of getting one large duvet between the two of you, you each get your own single duvet?

You know how Princess Diana said that famous thing about there being "three of us in this marriage"? Well, I feel like there are four of us in my marriage, and the other two are John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman.

Who are John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman? Oh, they're just the radio commentators for the Yankees games, and they come with us everywhere. They even came with us to Yellowstone.

I was sitting here on my couch just now, trying to vanquish writer's block through that ancient and time-tested method of staring at the blank computer screen and wondering idly whether Alec Baldwin thinks it's as funny as I do that his girlfriend's name is Hilaria, when my gaze wandered over to the bookshelf and I saw my passport up there on the highest shelf.

1. Eaten baked potato pizza. It tasted like it would taste if a person carrying a platter of potato skins collided with a person carrying a pizza, and calamity ensued in such a way that the potato skins ended up on top of the pizza and everyone ate them anyway. Slathered in sour cream, brought in a little plastic container for this express purpose.

2. Accidentally called the skybridges that connect most of downtown Minneapolis "sky malls."

I am recapping, excruciatingly slowly, the two-week trip we took to South Africa last year. Here is part one, about our layover in Paris; here is part two, about Cape Town; here is part three, about Cape Point and the penguins of Boulders Beach; and here is part four, about wine tasting and stroking a baby cheetah in Stellenbosch. Expect me to be finished with this sometime in 2014.